September 2011

September 30, 2011

Salman Masood reports in The New York Times today about the rising frenzy in Pakistan over the US waging war against the country. Smelling high ratings in broadcasting this paranoid non-sense Pakistan’s particularly creative news channels are doing their best to keep the frenzy going.

It is hard to distil down the widespread conspiracies into a single coherent narrative but the best one can make of it is this. Pakistan believes that the United States is after its nuclear weapons and it wants to bequeath Afghanistan to India. Both these fears create in this very male-centric nation a deep sense of emasculation.

Like all conspiracy believers, Pakistanis have also suspended disbelief so that they can free up some more space for phantoms run amuck in their fertile minds. It is not my case that it is beyond the US to contemplate at the very least a limited military engagement in Pakistan. It is also not my case that India has no compelling strategic interest in Afghanistan.

My case is that at this point in history the US does not have the critical strength to meddle directly in a country which sits practically buffeted between two rival Asian giants—China and India. Not when President Barack Obama is so politically beleaguered domestically and faces the very real prospect of becoming a one-term president. And certainly not when the country is passing through probably its worst phase of economic self-defeatism.

India may have very legitimate strategic interests in Afghanistan but the Indian leadership knows that while it can barely meet its own domestic challenges, it would be foolish to get deeper into the Afghan mess. Afghanistan’s enormous mineral wealth including the very essential copper, which China is already exploiting, is a definite attraction for India as well, but philosophically the Indian diplomatic dial is set on human development rather than mineral development.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh took a subtle swipe at China during his address at the United Nations General Assembly the other day when he said in the context of Africa, “We have to pay particular attention to Africa. Africa’s richest resources are not its minerals but its people.” The same logic extends to Afghanistan as well.

Coming back to the war frenzy being whipped up in Pakistan,while it may help hawks in the country to rally the country behind an insidious agenda there is no way it can be in its long-term interests.

September 29, 2011

Sex-selective abortion has been insidiously playing out in slow motion in India, China and several other Asian countries for the past two and a half decades, preemptively and deliberately preventing females from being born.

While the term sex-selective abortion is rather clinically precise, it does not offer a full measure of what its practice has meant in terms of its broader sociocultural implications for societies in India, China and elsewhere.

Journalist and writer Mara Hvistendahl has set out to address this crisis in her important new book “Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men.”

At its most basic sex-selective abortion is about the practice of aborting a female fetus simply because it is female. It is widespread in India and many other Asian countries and has been blamed for as many as 160 million women missing. However, its sociocultural consequences go far beyond the mere termination of tens of millions of female fetuses. In fact, the practice has the very real potential of skewing the sex ratio to the extent where the hyperbolic question ‘What if the world was full of men?’ may not remain all that hyperbolic.

Hvistendahl’s book, which has drawn strongly positive critical notices, puts this frequently ignored question in a context that is much more than the stereotypical explanation of the preference for boys as merely a manifestation of regressive Asian traditions. While the “boy preference” is prevalent in many societies throughout the world, including in the West, it has been significantly facilitated by technologies such as amniocentesis which, points out Hvistendahl, was introduced to India in the 1960s through a three million dollar aid from the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Although the original purpose of amniocentesis, which draws amniotic fluid from a pregnant mother for testing purposes, was to determine any genetic abnormalities in the fetus, it started getting misused mainly to find out the sex of the fetus as well. The test gained rapid ground in big cities such as Bombay in the early and mid-1980s. For instance, a study in January, 1986, showed that of the 8,000 abortions performed in the city, 7,999 involved female fetuses. Experts say the trend of terminating female fetuses may be drawing much greater societal outrage now compared to the 1980s but it has by no means reduced sex-selective abortion over the decades.

I interviewed Hvistendahl for two separate stories I have written for the IANS wire as well as South Asia Monitor. Unlike the other two media outlets which are governed by limits on the length of their stories, on my blog I have the opportunity to publish the interview uncut.

One example of the way Hvistendahl, who is a correspondent with Science magazine and writes extensively for other journals,approaches the theme of her book with great deliberation is found in this early passage: “Since I refuse to venture a guess when life begins, this is not a book about death and killing. I do not talk about feticide or gendericide or genocide, though some people I interviewed use those terms. On the other hand, I don’t believe the gradations in fetal development and the process by which life takes shape should be ignored, for they are what make widespread sex selection possible. Women who would never kill a newborn girl may abort on the basis of sex, and women who would never selectively abort may feel differently about eliminating embryos or sorting sperm. But in the end this book is not about life and death but about the potential for life—and denying that potential to the very group responsible for perpetuating our beleaguered species,” she writes.

Here are excerpts from the interview which is being divided in parts to be published over the next couple of days. (I have kept my questions shorter than what I may have asked in the actual interview).

Q: Why do you think India has failed to check the abuse of amniocentesis despite outlawing the practice?

A: You probably know better than I do but from what I gather it was actually the same story in other countries. There were people who said from the very beginning that this is a problem.Technology is leading to selective elimination of female fetuses, but at the same time there were people interested in making money off the technology. And then it seems in India the population control ideology contributed to some degree. That was very front and center at the time. Today in both China and India the balancing of the sex ratio is a priority but at the time it wasn’t such a huge issue from what I gather. Also, in China there were women, particularly within the Communist Party, who raised alarm bells when one child policy was introduced that it is leading to female infanticide and, by 1982, leading to sex selective abortion. From what I read they were largely ignored.

Q: The debate over sex-selective abortion invariably runs into the game of blaming backward Asian cultures, their preference for boys. How much do you think cultural tradition is responsible for what is happening?

A: At first I was looking at this issue in connection with China where I had studied it for years and then I got interested in how this problem exists in all these other countries, in different cultures and under different government policies. Yes, they (India and China) are neighbors but beyond that they don’t have much in common. You move beyond India and China and you have countries like Azerbaijan and Albania , not much in common there beyond that people have a preference for boys. There are definitely local reasons for preferring boys. Even if you—and I am not saying that son preference was as strong in the US-- go back to my grandmother’s generation I remember growing up noticing that she favored boys over girls and not to say that sex-selection would have caught on but it exists in a lot of cultures around the world.

Q: Do you think the strong Christian aversion for abortion in the US may have trumped amniocentesis here?

A: It is hard to speculate but I did include the history about how abortion was legalized and how it was introduced in part to show that these very recent changes have had an effect on attitude towards abortion. A lot of the times you find in articles about abortion in China in the Western press the idea that the Chinese are very pragmatic, that they don’t have the same have same ethical issues surrounding the ending of life. That’s just historically not true, historically not true in India as well. The tendency is to separate the East and the West in that regard. The context in which abortion is introduced in Asia is very important. In the US it was legalized after a lot of prodding by the feminist movement and introduced as a woman’s right. And since then it has become a battleground. And even the Christian right did not take it on as a big issue. The Catholics have always been very opposed but I think it was only in the early 80s that it became so highly politicized in the US.

Q: Why do you think that female feticide does not cause the kind of global outrage that issues such as ethnic cleansing, terrorism or even female genital mutilation do? There is this story about six million missing baby girls that the Indian census talks about. That’s a huge number, six million girls going missing between 2001 and 2011.

A: It is a difficult issue for supporters of abortion rights to talk about globally. India was the place I found where people were talking about sex selection the most and were most outraged about it in the public arena. On a global level it has become very difficult for abortion rights supporters to talk about; the anti-abortion movement does not seem to have much problem talking about it but, on the other hand, I don’t know that the main issue for a lot of people is actually the disappearance of millions of girls. It’s also about outlawing abortion. If you look at the sheer numbers it is easy to get outraged but it’s a difficult thing to talk about. What language do you use to describe it? You know they are not exactly missing females because they were never born.

Now we are seeing more and more discussion around the issue at the global level. I think that’s really encouraging. I think it is something that people now see that they need to care about not only because of the sheer numbers and the fact that you have subpar fewer women being born but also because of the effects for the women who are born, the increase in sex trafficking, buying of women as brides. The countries that have major sex ratio imbalances are all developing and it’s not just first priority in China also. However, increasingly the government sees the potential risks of not doing much about sex-selection. That may change but then countries like Vietnam do not have the resources.

September 28, 2011

I tend to read books which receive universal high praise much after the applause has faded. That way one is freed up from the obligation of joining the chorus. In keeping with that practice I have just begun reading Stacy Schiff’s biography ‘Cleopatra- A Life.’

I read the first 30 pages yesterday and feel compelled to report that it is unforgivably readable. Those pages are full of constructs that arrest you without reading you your rights. One such passage concerns the city of Alexandria and it goes: “A great metropolis, Alexandria was home to malicious wit, dubious morals, grand larceny. Its residents talked fast, in many languages and at once; theirs was an excitable city of short tempers and taut, vibrating minds.”

Or take this one: “The siren call of the East long predated Cleopatra, but no matter; she hailed from the intoxicating land of sex and excess. It is not difficult to understand why Caesar became history, Cleopatra a legend.”

From what I have read so far, Schiff writes as if she was Cleopatra’s contemporary, an approach fraught with colossal failure but somehow she pulls it off with rare ease. Schiff writes with such surefootedness as to make the reader feel that she was right on the heels of Cleopatra on the streets of Alexandria.

As someone engaged in writing three of my own books and ghosting two I know that the creative machine can come to an abrupt halt. It is from that standpoint that one marvels at any piece of seemingly effortless writing of the kind I am reading now. I am sure a great deal of exhausting work went into creating this book.

At the rate I am going, I think I will finish the book in a week. I will probably write a bigger piece later. For now all that I can say is that although I waited for the chorus of high praise to die down, I could not help but join it.

September 27, 2011

Comic Russell Peters is an apostate who has committed both blasphemy and sacrilege. No wait, he is a blasphemer who has committed sacrilegious apostasy. No wait, he is a sacrilegist who has committed blasphemous apostasy. No wait, he has committed apoblasacrilege. Yes, that’s the word I am looking for.

The Canadian comedian of Indian extraction is feeling some heat these days after he said the following about Indian actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, described by the international media as the world’s most beautiful woman.

The Indian media has quoted Peters as saying this about her: “Aishwarya is the biggest example of bad acting. She has proved it time and time again that in Bollywood, people can become superstars just by having a pretty face.”

He is also reported to have said, “She hasn’t become a better actor. She is still good looking, isn’t that good enough?”

Peters then compounded it all by also reportedly saying, “Oh good job Abhishek, you finally knocked her up!” That was in reference to the fact that the younger Bachchans are going to be parents soon.

If there is a better example of apoblasacrileging someone, I cannot find it. In the coming days Peters will discover what it means to state the obvious in the Hindi film industry. He will also discover that there are many sacred cows in that world which graze on gushing and uncritical praise. For someone used to eating sacred cows (metaphorically, of course, because I do not know if Peters eats beef) it may be hard to understand what all the fuss is about.

Someone please tell Mr. Peters that in the Hindi film industry it is about doing the exact opposite, that is stating everything but the obvious. He will discover that his international comic license is not valid in the world of Hindi movie stars. He will also discover that Hindi movie stars do not take kindly to anything approaching criticism and their fans do so even less.

September 26, 2011

“In choosing to use violent extremism as an instrument of policy the government of Pakistan and most especially the Pakistani army and the ISI jeopardizes not only the prospect of our strategic partnership but Pakistan’s opportunity to be a respected nation with legitimate regional influence.”

“They may believe that by using these proxies they are hedging their bets, or redressing what they feel is an imbalance of regional power. But in reality they have already lost that bet.”

With some minor tweaks these words could have been spoken by an Indian policy wonk complaining about Pakistan’s refusal to disengage from the shadowy and violent groups that inhabit the undefined space at the edge of its state apparatus. The fact that these were spoken by America’s outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen comes as a stark reminder about what India has been saying for close to two decades.

In directly saying that the Haqqani network, led by Jallaluddin Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin, is being run by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Admiral Mullen has used the rare freedom provided by his impending retirement to articulate what has been on the minds of the top US military leadership for quite sometime.

With ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted that truck bomb attack, as well as the assault on our embassy. We also have credible intelligence that they were behind the 28 June attack against the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul and a host of other smaller but effective operations,” Mullen told a US Senate Panel last week.

Conscious that he is about to end his tenure Admiral Mullen may have felt particularly motivated to be direct. He realizes that his candor would not hamstring his dealings with the Pakistani military because he would not be around too long in the job. However, he ought to be equally aware that the repercussions of his comments are bound to be felt well beyond his own tenure and could compel the Obama administration to take much more hardline approach towards Islamabad.

It is hard to see too many alternatives other than Washington telling Islamabad in explicit terms what it expects of it in order to maintain bilateral relations at a level which is even barely constructive.

So far Pakistan has chosen to counter the allegations with surprising vehemence, including assertions by its Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, that there was a real risk of Washington losing Islamabad as an ally if it continued with this approach. While publicly that may sound impressive, privately the Pakistanis know that they cannot afford to walk out of the relationship without forever ruining its strategic equations.

Swagger is a poor substitute for policy and the Pakistani leadership has to know that. So while the ebullient Ms. Khar may manage to use it to get out of a television ambush, behind the closed doors of intense diplomacy it is best left outside.

September 25, 2011

Unbeknownst to India, China and the rest of the countries in the region, not to mention the world, a new nation has taken birth on India’s northwestern border. It is called “the Pakistani country.”

Had it not been for the geographically sharp eye of Texas Governor and the man who would be U.S. president Rick Perry, we would not have known about this insidious development.

But before I get to “the Pakistani country”, a quick question to anyone who can enlighten me. What is so significant about the wee hour of 3 a.m. that US presidential aspirants get ritually asked about a call in the White House at that time? How would they deal with it if the 3 a.m. call indeed came? Why 3 a.m.? Why not 2.17 a.m. or 1.34 a.m. or even 4.26 a.m.? Could it be because men of a certain age are known to go to pee in the wee hour of three. (That was a long set-up to get in this rhyme in. Alternatively try this, Weewee in the wee hour of three).

During last Thursday’s Republican presidential debate hosted by Fox News, Bret Baier, one of the moderators, asked the candidates how they would deal with a 3 a.m. call telling them that the Taliban had taken over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

Perry’s responded “Well, obviously, before you ever get to that point, you have to build a relationship in that region.” He then went on to say, “And that’s one of the things that this administration has not done. Just yesterday we found out through Admiral Mullen that Haqqani has been involved with — and that’s the terrorist group directly associated with the Pakistani country — so to have a relationship with India, to make sure that India knows that they are an ally of the United States.”**

In calling it “the Pakistani country” Perry might have unwittingly resolved the severe identity crisis that Pakistan is facing. What Mohammad Ali Jinnah founded was “the Pakistani country” but all along the generations of leaders that followed ruled it as if it was Pakistan. No wonder things have not worked out so well for them.

All that the United States needs to do in the event that the Taliban take over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons is “ to have a relationship with India, to make sure that India knows that they are an ally of the United States.” That’s right, Barack Obama has not made sure that India knows that she is an ally of the United States. Can you imagine that the president went to New Delhi and Bombay in November, 2010, without letting India in on the secret that she is an ally?

** I have taken the direct quote from The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s column yesterday. I could not see the debate because I was at the United Nations General Assembly, where real countries and those which have just formed, are found. I found Pakistan but not “the Pakistani country.”

September 24, 2011

Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi had the refined ease of someone who was born into a life of generational privilege. There was a studied lack of hurry both in his demeanor and the way he spoke. Both had to do with the subconscious presumption that those engaging him socially or professionally thought it important to let him finish.

I interviewed Tiger, as he was popularly known, for about a couple of hours in the early 1990s at his family residence in New Delhi. Normally, I would recall at least some part of my conversations, often verbatim, with those whom I met as a journalist. In Pataudi’s case what I remember mostly are impressions.

He wore what seemed like a white Lakhnavi kurta and churidar. The kurta had a very subtle chikan embroidery. His living room had understated elegance of someone whose wealth was incidental to his social standing. As the title that unobtrusively tailed his name, Nawab of Pataudi, suggested he was also someone used to being deferred to and feted simply for who he was.

There was no question that he was an insistently handsome man, but like many who are good looking and born to privilege he did not assert that part of his personality. Somehow it seemed perfectly fitting that a scion of one of India’s many so-called royal families would be educated at Oxford and play cricket, and play it very well. As a young teenager I did see Pataudi in action in Jamnagar in Gujarat for what I remember to be a friendly, festive encounter between two teams. When he walked onto the ground with his shirt collars casually upturned and first couple of buttons undone, I thought that was the only way for a man to walk, other than when he was not walking like Dev Anand or John wayne.

Pataudi’s attitude as a batsman was that of someone who was mildly irritated that the bowler had the gumption to not only bowl but even believe that he could get him out. If his stance at the crease said anything in one sentence, it seemed to tell the bowler, “Give me your best and see what I do to it.” Contrary that pugnacity of his stance Tiger could be an extremely elegant player to watch.

It seemed inevitable when Tiger was appointed captain of India’s cricket team at 21, the youngest ever in the world. He captained the team in 40 matches, nine of which he won, which as a winning habit goes was not particularly remarkable. However, the fact that he led India to its first Test series win overseas against New Zealand in 1968 cemented his reputation as the best Indian captain for a long time. Ironically although unquestionably a natural born cricketer, Tiger’s statistical record does not offer a ringing endorsement of his reputation. In 46 matches, he scored 2,793 runs with six centuries and 16 half centuries with a batting average of 34.91. That could be because in his time much less cricket was played unlike today when it is played throughout the year.

In Tiger’s passing, India has seen the end of arguably the country’s most charismatic cricketer whose single biggest contribution to Indian cricket was injecting the belief in the country’s cricketing DNA that it could win if it chose to win.

September 23, 2011

Albert Einstein told us that the speed of light is unbreachable*, that nothing can travel faster than light. Think of the speed of light at 299,792,458 meters a second as the ultimate cosmic lock which has no key.

Well, it appears that electrically neutral subatomic particles known as neutrinos do indeed travel faster than light at 299,798,454 meters a second. Scientists at the Gran Sasso, one of the world’s largest physics laboratories, have announced that neutrinos travel 5996 meters a second faster. That is 19,671.916 feet or 3.72574166 miles. That figure may not seem like a lot in and of itself but when you consider the absurdly long distances in the universe this would make an absurdly big difference.

The scientists conducted the experiment to measure the speed of neutrinos by sending them from the European particle physics lab called CERN to the Gran Sasso on a 730 milometer underground journey repeatedly for three years. Some 15,000 neutrinos were used in the experiment but it is not known how many were harmed. (I had to slip that silly little crack in).

This finding is so enormously big that scientists around the world are probably looking askance at its implications, which are that everything that we know to be reality as determined by the Einsteinian physics could stand fundamentally disrupted.

Let me just cite one major mindfuck implication of this. The Guardian’s Ian Sample quotes Subir Sarkar, head of particle theory at Oxford University, as saying: "If this is proved to be true it would be a massive, massive event. It is something nobody was expecting.

"The constancy of the speed of light essentially underpins our understanding of space and time and causality, which is the fact that cause comes before effect.

"Cause cannot come after effect and that is absolutely fundamental to our construction of the physical universe. If we do not have causality, we are buggered."

Well said Professor Sarkar, we indeed are buggered if that is the case. Think of it this way. I exist without my parents doing anything to make it happen.

The notion that neutrinos travel faster than light has been talked about for a while but this is perhaps the first time that such intense empirical scrutiny has produced results to support that hypothesis.

People are already asking the predictable question whether Einstein was wrong, which is really missing the larger point that just as we think we have grasped the universe, it throws a wrench at us.

Neutrinos, incidentally, being electrically neutral can pass through just about any matter. Billions pass through us everyday after they come out of the sun. According to one calculation 65 billion of them pass every second through every square centimeter perpendicular to the sun. So if you stood perpendicular to the sunlight this morning, you are a neutrino billionaire several times over.

Let us make neutrino the global currency replacing the dollar because it is neutral and not a creation of any one nation. Every time someone asks you to pay all that you have to do is point to the sun. Only on this blog would you have a finding so fraught with such profound implications trivialized so quickly.

* Unbreachable is not a word but when we are talking about something as fantastic as a breach in the speed of light , what is a non-existent word?

September 22, 2011

There is a virtual revolt breaking out on the streets of the Social Republic of Facebook. Many of its restive citizens are out on the public squares throughout the republic of 750 million, demanding that President Mark Zuckerberg walk back some significant design changes that they are required to get accustomed to without any notice.

Kajal Basu, one particularly voluble renegade, says, “The reason I have to be pissed with Facebook is good reason. Now I find myself trying to second-guess Zuckie all the time that I'm on FB. Google+ is looking more inviting by the day.” Zuckie, incidentally, is a dismissive term used by the insurgents for the young billionaire president.

The latest trigger for the uprising is yet another change in the user interface (UI) of the country’s main web page. Under particular contention is President Zuckerberg’s decision to replace its most popular “Most Recent” button with with “Recent Stories” button, which in a sense allows President Zuckerberg and his government to decide what its citizens read. It also introduces a sort of ticker app at the top of the right hand bar where status updates, once prominently displayed in the middle, have now been pushed.

“I do not want Zuckie to tell me what is important and what is not. I am quitting Facebook to migrate to Google+ where I can enjoy my update freedoms without the Big Brother watching,” said one renegade on the condition of anonymity and because of fears of retaliation. This renegade has always used an unidentifiable contours as his profile picture.

The Zuckerberg government has not issued any statement on the rapidly spiraling protest but in an official blog accompanying the launch of the new UI, Mark Tonkelowitz (not to be confused with Mark Zuckerberg) said, “When you visit Facebook, you should see the things you're most interested in, like status updates from your family and closest friends. Last week, we announced improvements to Friend Lists and a new Subscribe button to help you see more of what you care about, and less of what you don't.

But it's not just the people you hear from that make your News Feed interesting. It also matters how much you visit Facebook. If you haven't returned in a week, you may want to see a summary of top stories first. If you've already visited several times that day, you probably care more about recent news.

Starting today, it will be easier to keep up with the people in your life no matter how frequently or infrequently you're on Facebook.”

Major television networks are closely monitoring the unrest on the streets of the Social Republic of Facebook and could dispatch their star anchors and correspondents anytime for wall-to-wall coverage of an uprising of no consequence whatsoever.

September 21, 2011

Walking to the United Nations complex this week is like sauntering through the Disney of global diplomacy. Cadences of global languages at once clash with and snuggle into one another within a two-mile radius of the U.N. building.

Although the predominant influence is English, one does hear a great deal of French and Spanish. On closer attention you hear Mandarin and Arabic. Lower down is the auditory jumble, although I was very pleasantly surprised to hear one of my favorite ways to say hello— the musical “Habari Gani?” (How are you or what’s the news?) in Swahili. That was followed by an equally rhythmic “Mazuri Sana.” (Very well/fine).

I think the U.N. Secretary-General should consider opening the General Assembly with this charmer from the 1966 film “Yeh raat Fir Na Ayegi’ composed by the redoubtable O P Nayyar, sung by Asha Bhosle and Minu Purushottam and written by S H Bihari.

What is lovely about this song is that the greeting ‘Habari Gani” and its response “Mazuri Sana” replace the original Hindi lyrics so perfectly. Let the performers from the stage ask to the audience full of global heads of states “Habari Gani?” the same way the song says “Huzoor-e-wala” and the audience can reply in unison “Mazuri Sana.” What better way to kick off a fractious General Assembly?